This set of 9 volumes, originally published between 1965 and 1991, amalgamates a wide breadth of research on John Milton, with a particular focus on his epic poem Paradise Lost. This collection of books from some of the leading scholars in the field provides a comprehensive overview of how Milton criticism has evolved over time, and will be of particular interest to students of English Literature.

First published in 1971. The intention of Milton’s Creation is to provide the student with a simple and direct entry into Paradise Lost. The author is not concerned with taking sides in critical controversy. His aim is to elucidate Milton’s primary meanings; this is a work of exegesis, not of interpretation. In this new book, on arguably the greatest epic in the English language, the central substance of Milton’s ‘great Argument’ is articulated with great clarity. By keeping in mind the epic status and universality common to Paradise Lost and Ulysses, the author introduces a post-Joycean perspective into his vision of Milton’s Creation.

First published in 1894. This Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton includes all of Milton’s poems, excluding the Psalms and the Translations in the prose works; and all of the words are given with the exception of some of the pronouns, conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions; but any of these used peculiarly are given. It is hoped that the work will be found useful not only by the student of Milton but by the grammarian and the philologist.

This set of 9 volumes, originally published between 1965 and 1991, amalgamates a wide breadth of research on John Milton, with a particular focus on his epic poem Paradise Lost. This collection of books from some of the leading scholars in the field provides a comprehensive overview of how Milton criticism has evolved over time, and will be of particular interest to students of English Literature.

First published in 1987. Milton and Free Will is an incisive, ambitious and comprehensive analysis and defence of the concept of free will, using Milton as an example and exemplar. Written with passion, and out of a lifelong engagement with the poetry of Milton and the philosophical and theological problems it encompasses, the book will illuminate both Milton studies and philosophical debate. The author engages with all the major currents of the free will debate, starting with Aristotle and Aquinas and considering arguments advanced by Hume and Kant as well as those of a number of modern philosophers including Polanyi, Kenny, Parfit, Plantinga, Swinburne, Dennett and Davidson. He pays particular attention to the Marxist formalism of Bakhtin, the Catholic phenomenology of Pope John Paul II and the evolutionism of Monod and Sober. He concludes with a rebuttal of the deconstructionism of Barthes, Derrida and Foucault. He claims that all the major difficulties faced by defenders of free will can be overcome if a notion of willing implicit in the work of Milton is properly understood. Freedom as Milton represented and understood it, he suggests, is a condition of mind arising out of inter-personal awareness and not a property or consequence of practical reasoning. He finds supporting evidence for this view in the writings of Newman and in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, which he reads as a narrative structurally reversing Milton’s representation of the fall of Eve in Paradise Lost. The author systematically analyses and reanalyses key passages in his texts in the light of the many arguments for and against free will, seeking thereby to affirm the validity in principle, and the personal and political importance in practice, of the Christian humanist tradition of which he sees Milton, Newman and the Pope as important (if sometimes misleading) spokesmen.

This set reissues 5 books on George Eliot originally published between 1963 and 1989. The volumes examine many of Eliot’s most respected works, including Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. As well as proving in-depth analyses of Eliot’s work, this collection also includes an extensive collection of her critical articles written between 1846 and 1868. This set will be of particular interest to students of literature.

The greatest problem in historical scholarship, theoretically and practically, is the relation between historians and their subject matter. The past is gone and historians can only study its remnants. On what basis do scholars select certain facts from the mass of data left from the past? How do they explain the interrelationship of the facts they select? What criteria do they use to evaluate their subject? The 35 volumes in this set, originally published between 1926 and 1990 discuss and answer these essential questions faced by historians. The development of historical understanding during the 18th and 19th centuries was one of the most striking features of Western culture. Both historiography and historical thinking advanced as never before. The historial movment of the 19th century was perhaps second only to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century in transforming Western thought. One consequence was extensive organisation and professionalization of research, which the volumes in this set reflect.